Ripples are simply a rush deck that just so happened to
receive a lot of press.

So today (1st of February 2016) marks the day
Odysseus gets Limited to 2 in English Format. Sort of glad
they did, but not for the reasons people would think. You
see, recently, I’ve been thinking about all the hype that
Ripples received while thinking about how I can waste
everyone’s week this time, and I remembered something that I
probably should have remembered a while ago. Popularity
shouldn’t indicate quality, if you intend to take this shit
seriously.

If one were to think about what the deck actually IS, in its
basestform, it
is basically a rush deck that just so happens to contain an
option that can pretty much get a good rush field set up
whenever they want it. A Grade 1 rush deck would contain as
many ways for Grade 1s to make 16k as possible and thus
lessen the need for field consistency, so really, what
Ripples have is a way to get Grade 2s in on their little
game as well. But that’s basically all it is.

What people don’t seem to realise, however, is that in
reality, actually countering rush is fundamentally not
difficult. What turns me off from G1 rush (apart from the
fact it’s a bit of a dick move and not even I’m that
heartless) is the lack of consistency. For rush, their
biggest fear is a well-timed damage trigger that lets the
opponent stave off the columns. Or sometimes, it’ll boil
down to some dillhole using anything that shits on their
columns very early such as Revengers or Early Game centred
Kagero, or fuck, Eradicators. See, that’s the thing. Once
you have the right tools on how to put rush down, it will
then boil down to whoever has the better hand and who gets
the most triggers. What the deck actually is won’t matter,
not unless rush is the absolute worst thing that could ever
happen to the deck for whatever reason.

So while Ripples may be something to be wary about, I would
not rank Ripples as the deck that can basically work as an
out to everything else in the meta. It’s got about a 50:50
chance to win, and if people were going to saturate
tournaments with Ripples, then of course it stands to reason
a lot of them will get past the rounds and make the top cut.
I’m willing to bet money if people suddenly started entering
with any other variant of rush, then odds are it would take
down some of the meta decks, but half of them would also
lose against the poorer ones that happened to get the
trigger needed to survive.

Ripples operated on the element of surprise. No-one had any
fucking clue what to do to fight it and so they pretty much
auto-lost on the spot. Having said that, I’m not entirely
sure if a good deal of the Ripple players understood what
made Ripples, because with a game like this people can’t
ever identify why they lost and thus never improve, unless
of course some players read my rants masquerading as amateur
journalism and get that damage > cards. Past the boiler
point obvious plays
there’s actually little beyond that that players exploit.

Let me give you an example of players copying a deck without
transferring skills: Sea Turtle aka Aqua Force’s Devil
Summoner. That card’s a coinflip at best: you need an entire
deck centred around that card which runs more G1s and 2s
than most, but because of its perceived +1, almost everyone
thought it was staple regardless of how many times they’ve
clearly forgotten about its whiffed in games and pulled
nothing. It gets worse if the deck is actually running
proper ratios since it’s a shit attacker and is too vanilla,
which Ripples don’t operate on.

It frustrates me because I don’t ever want to build a deck
based around trying to maximise one turn’s worth of
potential, largely because I’m a player who goes by averages
and thus will have a reliable out to almost everything. It’s
far more practical to have the priority question to ask
while deckbuilding be “what am I going to do if I don’t get
what I want?” Without either Odysseus being drawn or Turtle
plussing you by chance, the purpose of Ripples falls flat on
its gormless face. Then you’re stuck as vanilla with little
way to retaliate, especially if the deck happens to operate
on Early Game madness like Revengers, Blaus with Morgenrot
and/or Mars, Brawlers with Skyhowl and Chatura, etc. It
seems silly to me to gear the deck towards what the perfect
field with Pavroth as the Vanguard is going to look like,
thus leaving a blatant flaw in the deck and giving up Stride
support, not when all the pieces will need to be top-decked,
and even mulliganing a hand only produces the 4-of card
about 56% of the time.

The only illusion of its strength was the sheer volume. I’ve
actually watched a Championship Match video on Youtube with
Ripples and I found myself just yelling at the screen from
all the misplays (pausing to laugh a little at the
commentator who desperately wanted to explain Stride but
couldn’t because they stayed on Grade 2, the monster). I
hold no confidence in the people using the deck nor the
consistency of the actual deck itself. So for the most part,
I’ve come to terms with the fact that there wasn’t actually
that much to be scared about regarding Ripples, at all.

So what does it mean for Ripples from this point forward?
Well, assuming some people don’t accept that their time has
passed (much like the Gold Paladin players when the End and
MLB hit English meta) the deck itself will probably be
geared towards the conventional style of Ripples. That or
the people using it will try and use the same strategy with
only 2 Odysseus and thus fail miserably. For the most part
though, I expect the hype surrounding Ripples to die off and
everyone can go back to using more traditional decks, ones
that everyone knows about, especially now that Swordmy is
only allowed in Jewel Knight decks with Jewel Knight Grade
3s. Ones I can pick off and hunt for sport because
rear-guard dependency, like the chance and knowledge-abusing
cocksucker that I am.

So that essentially boils down to the reasons why I’m glad
Ripples finally got hit: because of the variety, not because
the deck was GOOD, as such. It was you. You were what was
wrong with Ripples. And just when you thought it was safe to
read without fear of a Vanguard-shaped sledgehammer to the
balls.